Trump’s open embrace of empire has ended any illusion of a rules‑based order. For Britain, clinging to a ‘special relationship’ that looks increasingly like coercion is no longer a strategy – it is a danger, says Roz Foyer.
One can only wonder what he might do next.
In the last four weeks alone, Donald Trump has overseen the kidnapping of a foreign president, bombed ships in international waters, threatened military action against a NATO ally, and threatened tariffs against the UK.
This behaviour is not an aberration, but an escalation. Throughout 2025, Trump threatened and sometimes applied tariffs on most of the world, while raining American bombs down on Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Iran, Syria, and Yemen.
Of course, American imperialism is not new. From Cuba to Chile and from Iran to Iraq, America has a long history of military intervention against its perceived enemies and its perceived economic interests.
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In the 1980’s the US supported Saddam Hussain’s murderous regime before its geo-political volte face which preceded the war in Iraq. As I write a shadow continues to fall over the brave secular women fighters of Kobane and the wider autonomous Kurdish regions in Syria and Iraq as ISIS is emboldened by the US pivoting in its relations with Turkey and the new regime in Syria.
In central and south America it has perfected a grim playbook over decades: demonise a leader, reject the will of their people, allege the cardinal sins of communism or narco-terrorism, and then fund dissidents to cause chaos and enable regime change. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have authored chapters in this bloody manual.
The difference now is the sheer, brutal, openness of it. Where once the CIA worked in the shadows, Trump live-streams the empire’s crimes on social media. The pretexts are discarded; the motive is nakedly declared – oil, land, money and control.
We are in a new age of Gangster Imperialism – led by a megalomaniac who unfortunately happens to be the most powerful man in the world.
This shift has two seismic implications.
First, as the Canadian Governor, Mark Carney so eloquently declared last week, the fiction of a ”rules-based international order” is dead. Of course, the people of Palestine, Iraq, Venezuela, and countless other countries already knew this. For them the rules based international order was always a fiction. Now, Western leaders who benefited from its existence must come to terms with its demise. Trump’s threats against allies, combined with the live-streamed genocide in Gaza making a mockery of international law have ensured that.
Second, this brazen aggression is not a sign of strength, but a symptom of decline. For all America’s military might (the US spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined), it is a dwindling power, lashing out as it feels economic and technological supremacy slip towards China. Its actions are those of a bully, whose bark is often worse than the bite, trying to look strong, not a confident leader. As EU leaders have pushed back, Trump has, temporarily perhaps, stepped aside from his threat, but as usual has proclaimed the headlines he wanted and made the others squirm.
For Britain, and indeed Scotland, this is not a distant drama. It is a direct and immediate threat to our security and sovereignty. Venezuela might feel far away. Greenland does not.
While I’d like to tell Trump where to go, it is more tricky for our political leaders. Because we are shackled by profound economic, military and trade dependence. Extracting ourselves from it will not be easy.
Our so-called “independent nuclear deterrent” is leased and serviced by the United States.
Our exports to the US outweigh theirs to us tenfold, making retaliatory tariffs an act of self-harm.
American companies employ more people in Britain than in Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Sweden combined. In Scotland, American-owned businesses employ more than 115,000 people.
Much of the backbone of our state – from government internet servers to prisoner transport – is built and owned by American corporations – many with close links to the current administration.
But understanding the scale of our economic and security dependency on the US is the first step in weaning ourselves off it – slowly but surely.
Because this is not a “special relationship.” It is more akin to a hostage situation. You cannot have a partnership with a power that openly bullies you and seeks to subvert your democracy (as the US is undoubtedly doing promoting the far right through social media).
Keir Starmers’s attempts to keep the Special Relationship alive, even his stunt with a letter from the King, have only further advertised the UK’s weakness.
This means rebuilding industrial sovereignty – building British ships and planes, reclaiming our energy from American hedge funds, and ejecting companies like Palantir, with its ties to war crimes in Gaza, from our health system.
It means forging new alliances: building closer trading links with Europe as well as closer links with China and the Global South. Our future lies in diversified partnerships, not subservience to one increasingly unpredictable power.
It means championing a global levelling up agenda. Because being able to trade with the rest of the world requires the rest of the world having enough income to buy our goods and services. Peace and prosperity – even from a perspective of national self-interest – depends on reducing the huge levels of global inequality we have today.
The task ahead is monumental. It will be politically treacherous and economically painful. But the alternative – remaining a bullied vassal state in an era of Gangster Imperialism – is a far greater threat to our peace, prosperity, and very democracy.
It would be a mistake of monumental proportion to simply try to ride this out. The removal of Trump, by impeachment or election is certainly something to pray for. However, Trumpism has laid bare the fundamental weakness in assuming that US hegemony can be relied on to guarantee either global peace and economic justice, or UK security and economic growth.
The rules of the game have not changed. They have simply been laid bare for all to see.
For the sake of our future, we must find the courage to end this one-sided “special relationship.” Our independence depends on it.
Roz Foyer is general secretary of the STUC
